British oil major BP has agreed to merge its interests in South American oil company Pan American Energy with refiner and fuel retailer Axion Energy in a new joint venture with Axion's owner and PAE partner ...

MOSCOW/BEIJING, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Chinese conglomerate CEFC (Shenzhen: 002018.SZ - news) will buy a 14.16 percent stake in Russian oil major Rosneft for $9.1 billion from a consortium of Glencore (Amsterdam: GX8.AS - news) and the Qatar Investment Authority, strengthening the energy partnership between Moscow and Beijing. CEFC China Energy has grown in recent years from a niche oil trader into a sprawling energy conglomerate and the transaction will allow China, the world's second largest energy consumer, to boost cooperation with the world's top oil producer.

Oil production from the first rig to operate in Brazil's offshore Libra area should start in late September or October, an official at state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Tuesday. "We are talking about two or three months of delay in relation to what we intended to do previously," Osmond Coelho, a general manager for the Libra project, said at an industry event in Rio de Janeiro. The consortium led by Petrobras had a technical problem connecting the well to the rig, as it prepares the extended-duration production test with a view to produce initially 30,000 barrels of oil per day.

The Danish shipping conglomerate AP Moller-Maersk is selling its oil division, mainly comprising assets in the North Sea, to French giant Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) for $4.95bn. Total will leapfrog BP to become the second largest offshore oil producer in the North Sea, after China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC (HKSE: 0883-OL.HK - news) ), following the deal. The takeover is the latest example of consolidation in the North Sea and comes as the industry continues to grapple with the prolonged weakness in crude prices that began three years ago.

Uganda and Tanzania signed a framework agreement on their proposed $3.55 billion crude export pipeline on Friday, a key milestone for the project, which is expected to start pumping Ugandan oil to international markets in three years. An official at Uganda's Ministry of Energy told Reuters the agreement covered terms on tax incentives for the project, implementation timelines, the size of the pipeline and local content levels, keeping it on track to complete in 2020. Adewale Fayemi, the manager for Uganda at Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) , said the project will become "the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world".

US authorities have agreed to the $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticide giant Syngenta (IOB: 0QOP.IL - news) by state-owned ChemChina, marking the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm. The move lays the path for what would be the latest in a string of foreign investments by Chinese firms fuelled by Beijing's call for its companies to "go out" and expand. It also comes days before a meeting between China's President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, who has castigated China over its huge trade surplus with the US and warned its companies are putting American jobs in danger.